Using SSIS to export data from a 64 bit server to Excel 2007
Instructions on how to set up the connection string and SSIS package to allow a 64 bit server to export to a 32 bit version of Excel
Free eBook: SQL Server Execution Plans, Second Edition
Get a free ebook from Red Gate Software and SQLServerCentral from MVP Grant Fritchey. Learn how to read and interpret execution plans.
Report Building 3.0: Adding Maps to Your Reports
With Report Builder and SSMS, there isn't much you can't do in the way of the common reports and visualisations. One of the more interesting visualisations uses maps, and that, combined with layers, makes for an impressive way of representing data.
Feedback is Encouraged
Microsoft is asking for feedback, more and more from customers. Steve Jones sees that as a good thing.
Grow Your Skills
The idea of moving to the cloud is scary, but it will happen for many of us. If not at this job, perhaps at the next. Learning more about the cloud is something Steve Jones thinks you should consider.
Tip: Resetting Identity Fields
How to reset an identity field to the next contiguous value, after deletions.
How to Identify and Backup the Latest SQL Server Database in a Series
I have to support a third party application that periodically creates a new database on the fly. This obviously causes issues with our backup mechanisms. The databases have a particular pattern for naming, so I can identify the set of databases, however, I need to make sure I'm always backing up the newest one. Read this tip to ensure you are backing up your latest database in a series.
SQL Saturday #172 - Washington, D.C.
A free day of training in the US nation's capital. Come join in if you are nearby.
Stairway to Server-side Tracing - Level 10: Profiler versus Server-Side tracing
Compares and contrasts tracing using Profiler with server-side tracing, illustrating important performance differences so that one can choose the right tool for the task at hand.
Auditing SQL Server 2012 Server Roles
My organization is looking at SQL Server 2012 and I know that the ability to create roles at the server level is a new feature. Since this is new and impacts security, how do I handle them and how do I audit them?
Blogs
A Last Minute Trip to the EU
By Steve Jones
My life has some crazy travel stretches for sure. Between speaking, office visits, customer...
Part 3 of 3: Tuning DiskANN — R, Alpha, L, Beam Width, Recall and Latency
In Part 1, we saw how ‘Vamana’ represents vectors as nodes, connects them with...
Automated SQL Server Benchmarking with HammerDB and Docker: A Complete Testing Framework
I’m excited to announce the release of a new open-source project that fully automates...
Forums
Server-Level Table sizes
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Server-Level Table sizes
Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in SQL Server 2025: Fixing the Kitchen-Sink Search Procedure
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Optional Parameter Plan Optimization in...
Question of the Day
ORDER BY alias
There is a table tmp_tab:
CREATE TABLE tmp_tab ( id int, val int );
INSERT INTO tmp_tab VALUES (1, 1), (2, NULL), (3, 3), (4, 4), (5, 5);You want to order the rows ids by the following expression:
ISNULL(val, id) + 1Which of the following queries produces the expected ordering and why? (Select all correct) See possible answers